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TBS Age of Wonders: Planetfall - AoW gone to space

vota DC

Augur
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First one, but shadows is fine its essentially same engine iirc.

No, the gameplay is somewhat different, new factions, a bit better balanced, leaders are now restricted to being wizards instead of melee killing machines that broke the first game balance so hard, etc. First game wins in terms of graphics and campaign, though

Not only this. In first game you move or you do ranged attacks. In second game you have "action points" just like age of wonders 3 (you move a little and you do 2 ranged or melee attacks, you move more and just one....).
Second game has different skill values (one has 1-10 for all except hitpoints)
Production time in second one is gold based while first game is tier based. Reason why musketeer is really double worthless. If you mod second game and make a ZERO gold units you can train how many you want....even filling the map with that unit in a single turn (that means you can't do free units in 2) while in 1 you can put free units without problems.
Second game has elemental weakness that first game lacks, that sucks I hope they will release source code to fix it since some units have "weak to X" in their lore but no gameplay wise!
 
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By the way which is the best age of wonders game from the old ones?just bought shadows of magic.

My favorite is the first, it has the better campaign and art, but the combat gets really cheesy and unbalanced. AOW2 is probably the worst AOW game, if you play it, just play the campaign. Shadow Magic is AOW2 but much better. AOW3 lacks the cool presentation of 1, but it has the best combat system. Its also too based on the leader classes, even if it got better now - at release, your race barely mattered, it was all about class.

Campaign, Art, Story: AOW1
Combat System: AOW3
Racial Diversity: AOW1, AOWSM
 

anvi

Prophet
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By the way which is the best age of wonders game from the old ones?just bought shadows of magic.
The gameplay is slightly different in each one.

It also depends how you like to play. Only the first game lets you build a "doomstack" which is having one group of units with a high level hero (or multiple) that are so strong, the single group can kill anything. The end game on big maps usually involves having to capture at least a dozen cities, with an army in each city, and then eventually you have to kill the enemy's army which can be 4 or 5 groups of enemies. With a 'doomstack' you can usually kill the entire lot by just clicking auto battle and 2 seconds later you have won. If not you have to try to pick off the final armies once it splits up a bit.

In Shadow Magic they made it so that overland magic is more powerful, so at the end game, when the enemy flees to his capitol city with a few stacks of strong units, you can just spend 10 turns blasting the city with spells to kill the majority of units (or all of them). Each of your own cities serves as a conduit for overland magic so can blast enemies almost anywhere in the world with powerful spells.

AoW3 is much more balanced . You can't make doomstacks anymore because all the units are more balanced, and heroes can't be built into high level godlike units. They can only get so strong, and mostly their strength is in providing a small boost for all the other units in the group. So it is better to have 5 stacks each with their own hero boosting them, rather than 1 stack with 5 heroes that can kill anything. It makes the game more strategic, but for some people it is also less fun.

Also the campaign in the first game is really good. It gets worse then in each game afterwards. But mostly I only like to play the Scenarios anyway so all of the games are good in that way. AoW3 is probably the best overall because it has the most tactical options. Also it can be super difficult because there are weird overpowered armies of undead that roam the world and force you to face them asap or get owned, and it also forces you to defend. In the other games you could generally just attack from the start and the enemy AI would retreat in panic which meant that you didn't usually need to defend. And even if you did, you could use the Town Gate spell to get back and kill them in a glorious counter attack. AoW3 doesn't let you do that, so you have to be tactical all the time. It is more slick, quests and things are done better. But still, the late game always degenerates into having to wipe out 10 turtling enemy groups. I found AOW1 more fun in that way because you could kill em all with a doomstack you painstakingly grew over the course of the game. AoW2 you do it by just spamming nukes on the city. AoW3 you do it by sending in 10 of your own enemy groups. There are some other minor differences too, but mostly they are all the same. So I would recommend AOW3 because of the better engine and better interface etc. I only regret buying it because I spent a lot on something that is barely any different to the one I played to death 20 years ago.
 
Last edited:

Lacrymas

Arcane
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Pathfinder: Wrath
Racial Diversity: AOW1
I wouldn't say so. All the races are basically mirrors of each other with very few differences in the highest tiers. The most ridiculous being the undead wraiths who can take on entire armies controlled by the AI solo because the AI rarely uses magic-based units. The gameplay doesn't change at all either way, you have your basic tier 1 fighters and archers, tier 2 priest-like healers/magic missile casters and cavalry, tier 3 are a collection of ideas that somehow end up playing exactly the same as each other, making it so units with more useful abilities are simply more powerful than the others, and the ultra-cheese T4s which mostly deal a lot of damage and are hard to kill.

Again, symmetrical design leads to sameyness and a bit pointless to have races.
 

fantadomat

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Yeah, it has a dedicated GPU that isn't getting used at all.
Yeah,same here. My GPU barely heats up,but the game is chugging and slowing down. I even tried it at lowest with all the graphical options shutdown,it stills lags. It could be memory leak,since it gets worse with time passing. Anyone else having optimization problems???
 

hello friend

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I'm on an actual spaceship. No joke.
You can doomstack in aow3 too. Rogue with first strike+flying mount+don't remember, been a while is really hard to kill. Early game theologians are a huge force multiplier because they can heal up your dudes. Get a lot of webbers and paralysers and freezers with flying capability. Alternatively a really high level dreadnought with lots of mana can summon an army of siege weaponry all on his own, won't work against humans but vs ai you can send him BY HIMSELF and take cities.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
Yeah, it has a dedicated GPU that isn't getting used at all.
Yeah,same here. My GPU barely heats up,but the game is chugging and slowing down. I even tried it at lowest with all the graphical options shutdown,it stills lags. It could be memory leak,since it gets worse with time passing. Anyone else having optimization problems???
I mean the laptop itself isn't using the dedicated GPU, not only AoW, so your problem probably isn't the same at all.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
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Yeah, it has a dedicated GPU that isn't getting used at all.
Yeah,same here. My GPU barely heats up,but the game is chugging and slowing down. I even tried it at lowest with all the graphical options shutdown,it stills lags. It could be memory leak,since it gets worse with time passing. Anyone else having optimization problems???
I mean the laptop itself isn't using the dedicated GPU, not only AoW, so your problem probably isn't the same at all.
When you start the game you could choose the GPU you want to use,at least in the gog version. They do have their own launcher,you could try it out and see if it works for you.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
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Messages
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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Looking at this.....fuck they don't even have a race that i would want to play. The closest thing to what i want to play is the vanguard,and they look generic as fuck.
The secret tech are all unappealing to me, I end up taking promethium because there's nothing that's right for proppa choppy.
 
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Racial Diversity: AOW1
I wouldn't say so. All the races are basically mirrors of each other with very few differences in the highest tiers. The most ridiculous being the undead wraiths who can take on entire armies controlled by the AI solo because the AI rarely uses magic-based units. The gameplay doesn't change at all either way, you have your basic tier 1 fighters and archers, tier 2 priest-like healers/magic missile casters and cavalry, tier 3 are a collection of ideas that somehow end up playing exactly the same as each other, making it so units with more useful abilities are simply more powerful than the others, and the ultra-cheese T4s which mostly deal a lot of damage and are hard to kill.

Again, symmetrical design leads to sameyness and a bit pointless to have races.

I think they are symmetrical at the basic level mainly because there's only so much you can do with basic stuff like swordmen and archers.

Yet, there is plenty of difference. (Dark) Elves are the best archers and have seducers, Goblin t1 revolves around poisoning people and letting them attack you first (and bombs), Azrac T1 is made of pure cheesery (dude, elephants), Orcs got the buffest swordsmen, Halflings got slingers and pony riders (who are one of the best T1 units), humans got the Pikeman (which is a superior version of the Goblin spearman), undead have hellhounds and a bag of resistances, dwarves have berserkers, etc.

But yeah, I do agree it could be done better. Some races have plain boring t1, like humans (who are supposed to be mega-vanilla tbf), lizards, high men, undead, while other races have awesome T1 like Orcs, Elves, Half-Lings and Azracs.

I don't think they are balanced. Its obvious that Orcs are the best race in 1.

SM had pretty good racial diversity, the real problem is that because cities are not restricted in unit production (and can grown), t1 units don't matter. At all. They are just there to help you fight until you reach T3.

But AOW3 racial diversity was pretty lame until many patches and expansions in. Even now, as a rule, the best units are class ones.

One thing that annoys me across EVERY SINGLE AOW game, is no parallel production. You can't use your extra production to crank out masses of T1 every single turn. Pretty sure in AOWSM and 3, that a properly-kitted out city can churn-out T2 and even T3 in a single turn... yet you can't use that to build more than one T1 unit at once. Even in 3, where T1 are better than ever.
 
Vatnik
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AoW1 has a lot of samey units, but when it does something unique, it goes all the way with crazy stuff like physical immunity on the wraith, the Elephant (massive gamechanger in multiplayer just for having wallcrushing on 30 MV), Air Galleys, the Incarnate possessing people, and so on.

I do think there is much to be said for playing with a mod, even a basic one like my Sword and Sorcery mod (available at the heavengames site), just to add thematic things like Fire Breath for the Hellhound, or making Musketeers dirt cheap.
 

vota DC

Augur
Joined
Aug 23, 2016
Messages
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SM had pretty good racial diversity, the real problem is that because cities are not restricted in unit production (and can grown), t1 units don't matter. At all. They are just there to help you fight until you reach T3.

I am not sure in fact that having every cities that can grow the same being a great idea. First game with big cities but that can you still have to upgrade was great, they just needed to develop that. Even Heroes of Might and Magic 3 added the option to disallow some structures to avoid to make every city the same!

AoW1 has a lot of samey units, but when it does something unique, it goes all the way with crazy stuff like physical immunity on the wraith, the Elephant (massive gamechanger in multiplayer just for having wallcrushing on 30 MV), Air Galleys, the Incarnate possessing people, and so on.

I do think there is much to be said for playing with a mod, even a basic one like my Sword and Sorcery mod (available at the heavengames site), just to add thematic things like Fire Breath for the Hellhound, or making Musketeers dirt cheap.

I guess that was the first game and they didn't care about balance and that was a great thing. You just had archer, infantry, ram, cavalry, priest and siege....and they weren't even tier based (cavalry was usually tier 2.....but halfling had it in tier 1, then halfing had paladin that was healer too). With 2 they "standardized" priests and they added the militia units. With 3 they added pikemen etc....before patch you didn't even have tier 2 pikemen like goblins and frostlings.
Also samey units had nice unit description with some exception (Azracs and frostlings archer descriptions were brief and lame) but they lacked gameplay stuff. For example was cool that Lizardmen used shark tooth and tridents as weapons but that didn't changed NOTHING. Also Azrac swordmen were very skilled (5 attack instead of 4) but with low defense (1 instead of 2) because low armor that was cool except the fact they had a freaking shield and still halfing slinger had more standing power than them! Also will get the skeleton description "they move at slower rate than same size humanoids".....well they don't...not sure why, maybe they were trying to split strategic map movement (here skeleton are fast: they never sleep or get tired) and tactical combat speed but feature was scrapped?
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
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AoW1 has a lot of samey units, but when it does something unique, it goes all the way with crazy stuff like physical immunity on the wraith, the Elephant (massive gamechanger in multiplayer just for having wallcrushing on 30 MV), Air Galleys, the Incarnate possessing people, and so on.

I do think there is much to be said for playing with a mod, even a basic one like my Sword and Sorcery mod (available at the heavengames site), just to add thematic things like Fire Breath for the Hellhound, or making Musketeers dirt cheap.
To be honest AoW must be the games with most races in the 4x genre. Also the RPG elements are pretty good,don't remember another 4x game that have that many traits and the option to research them after you started. Most of the 4x have the same garbage as this shitty game,you choose 2-3 traits and start the game,that is it.:decline:

Fuck,Age of Wonders is the best 4x game now that i think about it.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
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Pathfinder: Wrath
I'd say it has too many races and that's why they had to balance them symmetrically. The differences come mostly from minuscule irregularities between stats nobody will notice or grand, theatrical abilities on a few units like physical immunity or wall crushing on the elephants.
 
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AOW is not a 4X, AOW is a Turn-Based Strategy game.

Talking about things that the originals did better... why are all the newer AOW games capped at 8 players per map, when the original allowed for 12?

I am not sure in fact that having every cities that can grow the same being a great idea. First game with big cities but that can you still have to upgrade was great, they just needed to develop that. Even Heroes of Might and Magic 3 added the option to disallow some structures to avoid to make every city the same!

Agreed. In my AOW experience, I barely gave a shit to size 1 little hamlets, I often didn't even give them defenders and treated like gold mines that can produce t1 units. Size 2 and beyond were what mattered, with size 3 and 4 being the most important prizes because they allowed me to quickly produce the really powerful units, or at least

One possible idea is that some places should be growth-capped, and through those caps, they are limited from certain kinds of building. But it should be natural/soft caps, say with some places simply being in shitty terrain that can barely support anything.
 
Vatnik
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To be honest AoW must be the games with most races in the 4x genre. Also the RPG elements are pretty good,don't remember another 4x game that have that many traits and the option to research them after you started. Most of the 4x have the same garbage as this shitty game,you choose 2-3 traits and start the game,that is it.:decline:

Fuck,Age of Wonders is the best 4x game now that i think about it.
Come to think of it, modding can also greatly increase the number of abilities you're allowed to select at levelup. Any skill is a possibility and the cost of said skills is also adjustable. Even really wacky stuff like Flying. Really, AoW1 is greatly underrated with what can be done with mods and map design - I intend to make a map that's full of imprisoned Spellcasting 5 heroes and have it be a massive magical shitshow. Most multiplayer games are dominated by mundane troops, especially archers, so it'd be nice to have one with elementals everywhere, firestorms, etc.
In one PBEM game on a map I made we're already having a whole mass off summoned eagles facing off against fire-halo-ed warships on a subterranean river - the game is such a great chassis, with stuff like teleporters and 1-way teleporters, lava rivers that can only be crossed with fire immunity (or flying, I suppose). Loads of possibilities.
 

ERYFKRAD

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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
doomstacks
By this do you mean like a stack of a million peasants like in HoMM? Fuck no. Units might have upto six individual soldiers, and every army can have upto 6 units. You can have 6 armies surround an enemy and serve the whoppass, however.
As for heroes, if you build them right they seem capable of taking down 2-3 units per turn.
 
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Talking about stacks, I kind of hate only having six units per stack. I liked to make well-rounded stacks.

Also, not only they decrease stack numbers, they don't give an option to "attach" stacks to one another so you can move multi-stack armies without getting pissed the fuck off.
 

The Red Knight

Erudite
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Apr 18, 2017
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SM had pretty good racial diversity, the real problem is that because cities are not restricted in unit production (and can grown), t1 units don't matter. At all. They are just there to help you fight until you reach T3.
I am not sure in fact that having every cities that can grow the same being a great idea. First game with big cities but that can you still have to upgrade was great, they just needed to develop that. Even Heroes of Might and Magic 3 added the option to disallow some structures to avoid to make every city the same!

You can disable city growth and select what specific buildings are available (the latter both globally and per city). So the difference is between hardcoded city tiers, and players or mapmakers having to apply these manually. Flavourful selective disabling being underutilized in scenarios would be a different issue. A wasted potential of AoW2 is making all cities have the same map size as it diminishes their strategic differencies.

Though if I recall correctly, they haven't playtested the lack of growth properly and you can downgrade cities without being able to expand them again. Builing outposts + lack of growth is also rather boring (outpost-tier cities may vomit out a basic unit once in a blue moon and are worse than buildable towers of AoW1 for defending chokepoints).

I'd say it has too many races and that's why they had to balance them symmetrically. The differences come mostly from minuscule irregularities between stats nobody will notice or grand, theatrical abilities on a few units like physical immunity or wall crushing on the elephants.
There are also strategic racial abilities like water walking, mountaineering and night vision. The races being mostly generic fantasy human variants (vanilla humans, pointy ears forest humans, short highlander humans, short farmer humans, cave-dwelling humans, deus vult humans, ugly unwashed barbaric humans, desert humans, etc.) and the sprites looking samey is what contributes to there not being bigger mechanical and visual variety between races.
That said, I do find the uniform military feel of AoW1 enjoyable to go back to every now and then.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Only real gripe with AoW1 and 2 is that I have to invest in magic. And in 3 whatever my style of play, the sovereign is gonna be cavalier as fuck.
Plus I am strategically impaired so I never get far in these games anyway.
 

anvi

Prophet
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doomstacks
By this do you mean like a stack of a million peasants like in HoMM? Fuck no. Units might have upto six individual soldiers, and every army can have upto 6 units. You can have 6 armies surround an enemy and serve the whoppass, however.
As for heroes, if you build them right they seem capable of taking down 2-3 units per turn.
Kind of yeah, but AoW1 had some super powerful units, like a Wraith that was immune to physical damage, and the airship that could kill a unit from a mile away with its javelin. But mostly it was the heroes which basically had no limit on their strength, so if you could keep them alive until the end and keep feeding them endless exp, a single hero was strong enough to kill an army by itself. And if you then have a stack of maybe 5 overpowered heroes, a couple of wraiths or dragons or something to help out, and then put them all in an airship... it was a single stack to rule the world!

AoW3 nerfed the whole thing in the name of balance which is still fun in a different way, but I miss the 'doomstacks'. I think if you make a game like this too balanced, it becomes boring, like playing a basic RTS. Mass produce a bunch of whatever units and go fight your enemy's whatever units, and as long as you have more, you win. Hoping this game is more interesting than that.
 

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